MONTESSORI METHOD 



3915 



MONTESSORI METHOD 



MONTESSORI METHOD 



ONTESSORI METHOD. Dottoressa 

 (Doctor) Maria Montessori began her career 

 as a doctor of medicine, graduating brilliantly 

 in medicine and surgery, at the University of 

 Rome, when in her early twenties. She was the 

 first woman in Italy to achieve this distinction, 

 marking perhaps, in her courageous and single- 

 handed struggle against almost unanimous op- 

 position, the first step in her remarkable career 

 of daring and innovation. 



How the Method Developed,. It was in her 

 postgraduate days, during which she was occu- 

 pying the position of assistant doctor at the 

 psychiatric (mental disease) clinic of the uni- 

 versity, that Dr. Montessori became interested 

 in the treatment of feeble-minded children, with 

 whose miserable lot in Rome at that time she 

 came closely into contact. Drawn by the help- 

 less appeal of these unfortunate children, who 

 then received treatment no different from that 

 given the actually insane, and perhaps conscious 

 of a special vocation, she was led to specialize 

 in this direction. Abandoning an already ex- 

 tensive private practice, she undertook the di- 

 rection and reorganization of the state ortho- 

 phrenic school, or asylum for deficient and 

 feeble-minded children; this position she held 

 for two years, giving her services gratis, and 

 working from early morning till late at night. 

 At the same time she gave free courses of lec- 

 tures to teachers on the observation and train- 

 ing of defective children. In this work she may 

 be said to have achieved her first striking suc- 

 cess, children from her institute actually pass- 

 ing the state examination in reading and writ- 

 ing held for normal children. 



The methods which she used in this institute 

 were largely derived from the work of two men, 

 whose influence may be traced throughout her 

 subsequent development. Itard and Seguin 

 were pioneers in the educational treatment of 

 the mentally deficient. Itard had gained his 

 principal experience in the training of a boy, 

 "the savage of Aveyron," who had grown up 

 abandoned to a life of nature in complete iso- 

 lation from the society of man ; and Seguin had 



devised means whereby deficients could really 

 attain many of their normal powers, his meth- 

 ods, in his own words, following "the natural 

 physiological development of the organism." 



From the first, Dr. Montessori felt that there 

 was nothing in the methods she was using in- 

 herently limited to the instruction of deficient 

 children. "While everyone," she writes, "was 

 admiring the progress of my idiots, I was 

 searching for the reason which could keep the 

 happy, healthy children of the common schools 

 on so low a plane that they could be .equaled 

 in tests of intelligence by my unfortunate pu- 

 pils. 



"I believed that these methods contained 

 educational principles more rational than those 

 in use . . . and that similar methods ap- 

 plied to normal children would develop or set 

 free their personality in a marvelous and sur- 

 prising way." This idea was shortly to take ab- 

 sorbing hold of her mind, and led to renuncia- 

 tion of her work with deficients for the wider 

 sphere of education of normal children. 



Giving up every other occupation in order to 

 broaden and deepen her conception, she reen- 

 tered the University of Rome as a student in 

 pedagogy and philosophy, also studying experi- 

 mental psychology and making researches in the 

 schools in the science of man (anthropology). 

 The last named led to her acceptance of a chair 

 in Pedagogical Anthropology at the University 

 of Rome, in which subject she delivered free 

 courses of lectures for four years. At this time, 

 also, she devoted herself to a more thorough 

 study of the works of Itard and Seguin, trans- 

 lating them and copying them out with her own 

 hand into Italian in order more fully to absorb 

 their meaning. She also traveled in Europe, vis- 

 iting schools and studying all aspects of mod- 

 ern pedagogy. 



In 1906 the great opportunity came to her of 

 testing her ideas in a practical way. An indus- 

 trial society had undertaken the reform of some 

 of the badly-constructed tenement dwellings in 

 the poor quarters of Rome. These large blocks 

 of apartments had been built hurriedly at a 



